If any track was ideally suited to battling it out in the singles chart, then this is surely a strong contender. ‘Home Run’ starts out with resonant electronic guitar riffs chords before driving drum beat launches the song into full flow.

The lyrics work well and it has a nice popular music feel to the track. There some clear similarities in their sound to bands such as Radiohead and during softer moments, even Coldplay.

The band is not afraid to use silence as a musical force which is unusual amongst most bands in today’s society; this effect is heightened by following such sections with much louder and contrasting rhythms.

A strongly recommended single from a band that is sure to hit the big-time very soon.

The ‘rejects’ most recent single suggests a mature and melodious path in the band’s career. “The Wind Blows”is a song about a broken love. It’s repetitive and less upbeat than the likes of chart-topping “Gives You Hell”, which was the first single to be released from the American foursome’s new album.

Admittedly, the mainstream boys have done it again. Despite “The Wind Blows” not being as popular, people seem to like it, which keeps the momentum going for now.

Singer Eric Ronick is working at the top end of his vocal range on this song, which emphasises the breathy. ethereal quality of his voice and the subject matter of the song which, you guessed it, is someone having a breakdown. The verse is driven along by the rhythm section, particularly the drums and builds up to a chorus where all of the instruments kick in to reinforce the breakdown message.

As a sampler for the band and the album, which the first single usually is, this is pretty good; it gives you a good idea of what the band’s about while still holding back the best for later. This isn’t the strongest song on the album by a long way; there are at least 2 songs which are much better, catchier and more commercial and will probably do better as singles. It’s not a bad song, but there is so much more to come.

“Stellify” (become a star?) starts with a simple and effective two keyboard riff (piano and keyboards on alternating half beats) then in come Ian Brown’s unmistakable vocals and the tune builds as first drums and then bass come in to complete an uncomplicated but incredibly effective arrangement. At around two minutes in there’s a bit of a Mark Ronson moment when the song breaks down to a two-trumpet riff (actually it sounds more like synthesised brass to me, rather than the polite interjections that we usually find on Ronson productions). The raw brass sound works perfectly as a contrast to the smooth arrangement of the rest of the song and then we’re off again building towards a slap ending at three and a half minutes.

In this edit, everything is in that needs to be there and nothing that shouldn’t be there and it’s the right length for radio play. It’s a song which should keep the fans happy, works on the radio and doesn’t make compromises to do that. Great single.

What About Now marks Westlife’s first single since Us Against the World which reached number 8 in the UK charts in March 2008 and the lads will surely be hoping to find themselves heading back towards the top of the charts with their new release.

The new track sees the boys sticking to what they do best as they bring us another beautiful power ballad. The vocals, as expected, are amazing and the lyrics are great too. My only criticism of this single is that it’s another cover (the original being sung by Daughtry) and while it’s a brilliant song, it would have been nice to see the boys do something new with their first single in over a year. Nevertheless, it will hopefully be a huge hit with fans worldwide.

Look out for track two on the single (You Raise Me Up live at Croke Park) as it’s also a great song and perhaps even better that it’s the live version.

Westlife’s upcoming album, Where We Are, will be available to buy from 30th November.

Gary-Go has supported Irish trio The Script, along with Take That on their comeback tour this past summer. You would think, because of such large crowds he has performed to (Take That have a LOT of hardcore fans!), Gary would be rather well-known and would have had a lot of publicity with his recent album in the UK. This doesn’t appear to be the case.

I’ve come to the conclusion this may be due to such negativity he portrays in his songs. With lyrics such as “lost without a trace”, “Open Arms” is not a song you would choose to listen to if you were feeling blue!

However, despite being quite a ‘gloomy’ track, I have to admit, it’s catchy. When the chorus kicks in, optimism shows – You’ll be thankful to know! The self-taught multi-instrumentalist has to be given some credit as there doesn’t seem to be many artists these days who write and produce their own music. Good on you Gary.

What it’s all about is that the single just isn’t very good and none of the attempts to polish it with rare tracks are going to make it any better.  Although I was never a Smiths fetishist in the ‘80s, I always thought there were loads of good songs and a few great songs in there.  Even with Morrissey’s solo material I’ve heard songs that I thought were truly outstanding; and then this came along.

Lyrically it contains the worst of Morrissey’s themes; self-pity and ennui with a little touch of prescription drugs thrown in for light relief. With Kurt Cobain you knew it was serious and  Eminem will play it for laughs but these lyrics sound like a bad Smiths pastiche.  Musically, the overall impression is that Morrissey’s trying to indulge his perennial New York Dolls obsession with a nod in the direction of early Pistols as the band thrashes its way through the mercifully short two and a half minutes.

The Morrissey obsessives will probably love this but I think we deserve something better from someone with his reputation and history.  Despite all of the band’s energy, somehow it all feels a little bit lazy and that isn’t  good enough.  A disappointing choice for a single.

The single “Start Of Something” off their latest album “Silver Spoons and Broken Bones” consists of one truly inspiring classic rock and roll track (“Start Of Something”) and three classic rock and roll tracks with an acoustic tang oozing out of every strum (“Don’t Drink The Water”, “Things Could Be Worse”, and “Where You Comin’ From?”); this four track CD alone has already out played 90 percent of albums currently topping the charts for me. My favourite was definitely “Don’t Drink the Water”, plenty of sweet, meaty acoustic goodness, and even better was totally unrelated to The Dave Matthews Band.

Don’t let that lead you to believe that the other four are somehow any less though, each and every song has the same key feature which has helped this single find its way onto my iPod’s top three played single CDs; rock. So few bands write music like this anymore, I in fact loved the CD so much that I just had to head over to Wikipedia to find out their other stuff. As it turns out, this entire band is made up of MEMBERS OF “THE DARKNESS”?! I couldn’t believe my eyes, I even went as far as to assume someone had deliberately edited their Wiki page just to screw with me, but no, it’s TRUE! So I am assuming that by reading this you may already know this (or if you didn’t, you do now), so let me lay it our straight and say Stone Gods are nothing like The Darkness; they are so much better.

I’ve never felt so happy yet so hyper when listening to a band I’ve never know before, if you’ve never heard of them before then I would highly recommend you stop reading this right now, and go to YouTube to see if you agree with the following paragraph… Seriously…

This single has earned its 5 starts proudly, I don’t expect to fall in love with a band this quickly again for at least another year, these talents are a rarity in today’s age. Enthusiastic, in your face rock is what Stone Gods are about, and I applaud them for this entire single, no possible description I give can possibly do this justice. Go now, go listen to them in any way that you can, and you will understand exactly what I mean. I’m sorry Justin, but your services will no longer be required.

The marketing strategy for Lady Gaga is interesting, portraying her as the glamorous but obviously contrived bad girl while setting up appearances at the BRITs, G.A.Y. and a support slot on the Pussycat Dolls Doll Domination tour. All of this combined with the UK tour set up for June and July looks suspiciously like trying to cash in on a current phenomenon with a very limited shelf life (not new in the music business but becoming increasingly cynical, particularly with female artistes).

As a writer and a very gifted singer, Lady Gaga can’t be really be compared to the likes of Britney Spears (or The Pussycat Dolls) but the one-size-fits-all music business marketing doesn’t really recognise these distinctions, so the next 6 to 12 months should be fairly interesting. Let’s hope there’s still a career left after the initial burst of hype because there is a genuine talent there which shouldn’t be sacrificed to the demands of the machine.

Back to “Poker Face” then; it’s a great pop single which will bring back memories in years to come of early 2009. Let’s hope that Lady Gaga stays around for a while as well.

Inside this lumbering heavyweight is a pretty good song struggling to be let out, and a bit more subtlety and space in the mix would allow all of the good elements in the song to shine through instead of fighting with the tribal chants and drums for a fair hearing. 

The distorted guitar and thunderous bass which start the song along with the chanted “na na na” refrain dominate the song almost to the exclusion of everything else until the brief breakdown to acoustic guitar and keyboard at about the halfway point,  which adds some contrast before building back up again to the sledgehammer drums and bass driving it on to the end.

With a bit more subtlety and a bit more use of dynamics (turning down to 9 for 2 seconds doesn’t count), this song could be a mainstream contender because the hooks and the melody are there if you make the effort to dig them out. A remix by someone with an ear for radio play would do this no harm at all.